I’ve dropped the car keys. All the lights back in my grandmother’s house are on and the music is so loud it’s echoing against the trees and I can’t see anything out here and my keys are gone, lost somewhere in the dark. It’s too noisy to think and even if I did have the keys, even if I did have them, there’s a white Toyota with a faded COEXIST bumper sticker boxing in the Volvo. I don’t kick their bumper. I come close, though. I’m grinding my teeth, which is a habit I thought I had dropped forever, and my ears hurt and my grandmother is saying again, “You know I don’t joke, darling.” The card is crumpled in my fist—no, I’m just making a fist. The card has disappeared somewhere. I don’t remember if I dropped it somewhere or threw it away from me into the dark.
I didn’t lose my temper at my grandmother. She said, “I don’t see why you’re so upset about this,” but I didn’t shriek and draw out crowds of people to see who was murdering us deep in the shadows of the back lawn. But there were still people watching us, faces around the corner of the garage peering at us, people on the deck. Brandon standing next to Laura on the steps down to the lawn. Looking our way, maybe. Laura can always tell when I am “considering acting irrationally”—that’s what she calls it. Considering acting irrationally, which is very unlike you, Ashley. Maybe she can tell from a distance. We’ve never tested it. Why am I thinking about things like this?
Maybe they didn’t see anything. Maybe they didn’t notice me escaping down the driveway from my father’s studio.
I’m pacing around the car parked behind mine and I think I see a glint in the grass, but my shadow blocks the light. I drop to my knees and search in the tall blades. The front lawn is too long because I forgot to remind my father to refill the gas tank on the mower, or maybe he just forgot to do it after I asked. Combing my fingers through, hoping Schatzi, the neighbor’s French bulldog, hasn’t been escaping through the screen door again, crashing headlong and leaving a big hole behind him because he’s so excited to be crapping on our lawn. My dress is too tight to be kneeling on the ground like this and the urge to run away is swamped by a wave of tiredness. That’s what this was supposed to be, running away—but just to take a breath, in and out, while I work out how I’m supposed to respond to my grandmother. To the idea of weight-loss surgery.
My grandmother thinks I need surgery.
No. My grandmother knows which buttons to push.
She knows that what I was looking at was the words Full Tuition and that my heart stuttered and leaped all at the same time before any other words on the card made sense.
I said, “Why? Why wouldn’t you just pay for me to go to school if that’s something you can do?”
She said, “Because it would be worthless.”
“Worthless,” I repeated. “I don’t know what that means,” I said.
“Ashley,” she said, in the voice that can flay her residents at the hospital. “Think about it.”
“About how I’m worthless?” I said.
As I’m kneeling on the lawn the front door opens, of course it does, and everything gets brighter and this dress is too goddamn tight to let me stand up with any kind of dignity, but I don’t care. I haul myself up and run my fingers through my hair. I can’t see through the bushes and over the railing from here, but I hear Laura say, “No, she didn’t say she was leaving,” and I sigh. She says, “I’ll be right back,” and I know she’s coming to see if my car is still here.
She glides down the stairs in her heels and right past me. She says it’s a life skill to always look graceful in dangerous situations. It is also a life skill to wear whatever you want with all the aplomb in the world. Laura’s taste in clothing is “everything.” She’s dressed up now, changed out of her shorts and into a maxi-length red dress that makes her dark skin look like it’s glowing from a fire beneath the surface, a sculptural dress draped down her body as if she were an artist’s model. Fabric flutters over her shoulder. No mask, just a tiara. She looks like she doesn’t belong here in this town.
She doesn’t belong here in this town.
We all know every corner and hiding spot and person and secret here, and that’s enough for most of us. That’ll never be enough for her. Or me. I want to leave more than I have ever wanted everything.
Laura stands with her hands on her hips at the end of the walk, peering down the street like she’s trying to decide which way to go.
“Hi,” I say to her, and she spins around.
She sighs. She says, “Your zippers are shiny,” and I look down at myself. I’m glinting geometrically. And my knees are dirty.
“I lost my keys. Do you have your phone?”
“It didn’t go well,” she says flatly. She pulls her phone out of the little silver furry bag she has dangling from her wrist and hands it to me.
“No. Is she looking for me?” I ask, turning the phone over in my hands.
“You’re being illogical,” my grandmother had said. “I’m not suggesting that you are worthless. I said no such thing.” She moved toward me, as if she were going to put her hands on my shoulders and shake some sense into me, but I stepped back out of her reach.
“Then I have no idea what you mean,” I said. “No idea.” I cleared my throat and this was the exact feeling: my heart had dissolved so it was an acidic mess in my chest, leaking into the rest of my body. Just like that.
“Ashley,” my grandmother said. And I had to turn and walk away from her. I was going to be the one to end this.
“Principle Simons is talking to your grandmother about the Organic Food for Every Neighborhood Initiative,” Laura reports. “And she’s demanding that your father feature the school in his real-estate listings. She’s frothing about it. Waving her hands around. She’s very worked up. Her teeth are huge, did you ever notice that?”
“Wait, my grandmother’s?” I think maybe I’ve lost the thread of the conversation. I can’t focus very well on what Laura is saying.
“No, Principle Simons.” Laura waves her hands around and her wrist bag bobs and dives.
“Okay,” I say. “I need to find my keys.”
Laura pulls me into a quick hug. She’s as tall as me in those heels. “We’ll find them,” she says.
“Okay,” I say. I pick my way out of the grass and head down the walk, using Laura’s phone screen as a flashlight. Nothing is glinting.
“This is perfect,” I say.
“Ashley,” Laura says, spreading her arms wide, her purse swinging in circles from her wrist. “It’s a beautiful night and every single person in this town is trying to fit in your living room. They all love you, and they’ve eaten all your tamales.”
“All of them?” I say. I stop in the middle of the road. Both ends of the street are dark and I realize I hadn’t picked a direction to go in anyway.
“I got one but Morgan ate most of it while she was trying to sell me on being treasurer this year, which is really highly unlikely and she knows that. Pretty sure the girl was after my food, which is immoral and not behavior suited to a class president and future legislator.”
That’s something Laura’s dad says when he’s moved to act like a father in the brief glimpses she gets of him. Young lady, that dress is not suitable for a future legislator. As if her dad is not perfectly aware that Laura is not going to be legislating anything except her own life.
“At least he thinks I’m smart enough,” Laura sometimes says.
“I want to play skee ball,” I say now.
Laura claps. “Tickets! I will win all the tickets and we will get pirate hats. I’ll text Jolene. Let’s take my car.” She’s fumbling in her furry bag again and produces her key fob. She is not going to press further, she is not going to ask me more, she is not going to give me advice. She’s heading down the block to her MINI Cooper and she’s walking like a supermodel down the middle of the pockmarked road, her heels ticking off the beat of the music inside the house.
“Should we change?” I say.
“Never change,” Laura calls over her shoulder.
Again I hear my grandmother saying, “You’re being illogical. I said no such thing. You know exactly what I mean.”
She had moved toward me, as if she were going to put her hands on my shoulders and shake some sense into me, but I had stepped back out of her reach.
“I have no idea,” I had said. “No idea.”
I had been ready to walk away, but then my grandmother had stepped forward so I could see her face in the light. She had cupped my cheek, squeezed my shoulder. “I love you. You know that.” She had stroked my hair back from my face. “I want you to think about your future. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Go enjoy your party.” And then she was the one who had walked away.
I’ve stopped in the middle of the street and Laura is almost around the bend ahead of me. I want to run after her, so I do. I race down the street with my hair flying and bump into her with a hug and she laughs.
“See? I told you things were perfect,” she says. She throws her hands up in the air. “All the things.” Her face is bright in the moonlight and sparkly with makeup and her tiara is askew. Jolene is bounding toward us, her face alight. “You’re perfect,” Laura says. When she hugs me I’m glad they can’t see this sudden, unfamiliar doubt I feel twisting my face.